fram^ starts, builds and invests in technology companies with proven business models. We provide deep operational support to founders and help them build market-leading companies.

We enable entrepreneurship

fram^ Venture Building is an alternative and proven approach to early stage company building and investing. Together with outstanding teams of founders, we are founding and building new companies based on a systematic selection process for business models. Our team empowers our ventures with deep operational and financial support and has over 60 years of track record from global leaders such as McKinsey, Ericsson, BCG, Kinnevik, Lazada, Cevian Capital, Tele2, Bima and much more.

Investment screening

fram^ Investment Committee screens a long list of potential business models to invest in 2-4 times per month. Typically 10-30 business models discussed per meeting and not more than 1 in 100 are selected. fram^ has its sweet spot in consumer, insurance and finance.

Seeding

fram^ provides ventures and founding team with enough capital to build the company during its first 18-24 months. After that fram^ can both retain ownership as a long term holder or continue as investor alongside new entrants.

Profitability

fram^ requires all of its ventures to reach significant revenues within the first half year. From there the venture must prove an ability to scale its business and operations to a level of enough substance to get be ready to prove profitability within 24 months.

The fram^ Venture Builder so far

The team behind fram^ has started and built large companies with significant value from scratch. The Chairman or fram^ was CEO & Co-founder for Lazada Vietnam for first three years. Lazada Group was later sold to Ali Baba Group at a valuation of 3.2 bnUSD. The CEO of fram^ has founded and built the insurance company Bima on Sri Lanka to 300 employees and profitability.

The fram^ Venture Builder is still in its early days. However, we have already had the opportunity to start two companies that we took all the way to carving them out and transferring the venture builder’s ownership to the shareholders of fram^. Our first two companies are named Pangara and Intrepid. Read more about them below.

Current Ventures

Leading car classifieds site in Vietnam with few hundred thousand listings in total and millions of pageviews per month. Founded by Rocket Internet in 2014 and recently acquired by Fram^ in 2017. The new management team has set the target to aggressively increase both traffic and revenue by several times in 2018.

SmartBuddy Vietnam is an online retail platform for finance and insurance products enabling consumers to compare, select and purchase the best products on the market. Founded in June 2018 by fram^, within the first 3 months of operation SmartBuddy launched the platform, integrated its first products from Vietnam’s largest non-life insurance company and achieved the first sales both online and offline via its own direct sales force.

SmartBuddy Sri Lanka is an online retail platform for finance and insurance products enabling consumers to compare, select and purchase the best products on the market. Operating in partnership with some of the country’s largest financial institutions and insurance partners.

A coding school that offers most effective expert-led software engineering bootcamps to IT developers through both online and on-campus classes. Founded in early July 2018 by Fram^ and has already successfully launched its first course with very positive response from the market.

Online marketplace to make it easy for parents and their children in "K12" education to find premium private tutors. Investment decision made by fram^ Investment Committee in June 2018. Managing Directors hired in September 2018, incorporation currently in progress.

Exited Ventures

Premium online marketplace for top ranked South East Asian IT developers (pre-tested by Pangara). Two external rounds of investment raised (in total ca 2 mUSD raised externally). Founded early 2015 by Fram^

The companies we build in the fram^ venture builder are forged by hard work, perseverance and creativity.

— Christopher Beselin, Chairman

Building Intrepid from scratch inside and in collaboration with the team at fram^ has been an intense and ultra high-pace experience. Looking back, I’m amazed when I see what Intrepid has become In such short period of time since company foundation.